Everybody makes mistakes. When it comes to filling out tax forms, mistakes can be as inevitable as death and taxes. Fortunately for HR professionals, mistakes on employee tax forms are hardly ever life-threatening; however, you do want to keep the mistakes to a minimum to avoid penalties to your employees.

All adjustment requests for 2016 must be submitted to the PlanSource Service Team no later than Friday, December 16, 2016. This deadline is just two weeks away! In order to shield clients from W-2 late filing penalties and fees, all adjustment requests received after December 16th will be processed after W-2’s have been shipped, and will result in W-2c’s.

What does the deadline mean for me?There is typically a spike in adjustment requests (changes to name, SSN, address, etc.) to the service team in January and February after W-2’s have been generated. These requests result in large numbers of W-2c forms and can affect employee wages for all quarters.

What can I do to avoid W-2c’s?Don’t wait for your W2 files to start verifying employee data and YTD tax and wage information! Several tools are available for your use as outlined in your Year-End Guide and Workbook including:

Wage Detail report ran for 2016 YTD and grouped by employee name

Business Intelligence Year End reports

Employee Engagement is Key!Ask your employees to log in and check on their information themselves.

Social security number

Spelling and accuracy of name

Spelling and accuracy of address

W2 electronic consent preference

Accuracy of YTD tax codes, amounts, and wages on most recent pay stub

What about third party sick pay reporting for Q4?Ask your third party vendor now for any available reports from 2016. You don’t have to wait for your statement to arrive in the mail in late January. Most providers allow you to set up an online account and retrieve payment details in real time. If you have any payments from prior quarters that you cannot process yourself, send them to the service team as soon as possible. Requests to enter in 3rd party sick payments after Dec. 16 will result in a W-2c.

Balance employer deductions YTDMany clients require mass updates to employer medical and 401k match amounts as part of the year-end reconciliation process. You can leverage the Summary Payroll Register to balance these items now by running it YTD, and broken down by employee. This will show you all employee and employer amounts for the year for each employee.

Looking forward to 2017If you anticipate updates to your data for a 1/1/2017 effective date, begin engaging your service team as soon as possible. Review your SLA for information on turnaround times for requests. Note that large projects take several days for our teams to complete and verify and should not be held until the last minute.

Nothing regarding filing tax forms will become a life-or-death situation (that we know of); however, you do want to avoid mistakes on your tax forms if only for your own peace of mind. Get started now on keeping all your information accurate and up-to-date, and you will avoid being the first to have a potentially fatal tax filing experience.